Sweet memories: St. Charles Colonial Cafe’s mini-museum shares ice cream history spanning 125 years

Only Colonial Ice Cream shops could pitch one of its milkshakes as an “Awful, Awful” and have it become a favorite for customers.

“It was for awful big and awful good,” said Tom Anderson, president of the Colonial empire in St. Charles for 50 years until 2014, when he turned operations over to his son Clinton Anderson.

Next year will mark 125 years the Anderson name has been involved in milk or ice cream production, distribution and sales throughout the region, with many of those years as a St. Charles icon in the Colonial name. During that time, quality ice cream and clever ways to promote it became the Colonial standard.

The company’s longevity, and an overflow of Colonial memorabilia and ice cream industry devices from yesteryear, gave Tom Anderson the idea of creating a Colonial Museum in the rear garden room of the Colonial Café on the east side of St. Charles.

Hundreds of pieces of antique ice cream equipment, photos older than 100 years, Colonial marketing memorabilia and past menus fill the museum, including items touting the “Awful, Awful” and the even more well-known “Kitchen Sink” ice cream creation.

“This is stuff Colonial had, and actually used, for years and we had it stored away as we changed different directions (from ice cream shops to restaurants known as Colonial Café),” Anderson explained.

Having items stored in file cabinets and boxes, Anderson noted “it became time to purge.” That said, he knew if he did not display items at the restaurant, they had no other place to go.

After years of collecting items, Anderson spent about three years getting them in order, framing documents and establishing display cases that take visitors down a memory lane first started in 1901 when Simon Anderson established the St. Charles Pure Milk dairy business. By 1935, the dairy had established its own retail locations to sell milk and ice cream.

“In addition to Colonial things, I collected other ice cream industry machines and pieces, with some being from eras even before Colonial,” Anderson said. “I would go to various shows and pick up a lot of different things, like ice cream scoops used in the industry somewhere else.”

Anderson kept in touch with The Ice Creamers, a Nashville-based collector group, to learn about what might be available and where.

In the meantime, he created the museum, one certainly enhanced when he tells stories about the various pieces and points out framed documents that provide history lessons for visitors.

Standing next to a metal tray with a dozen holes in it, Anderson explained it was a popsicle tray, one he worked with as a teen at Colonial.

“It would take five people several hours a day to make 1,000 dozen popsicles,” Anderson said. Colonial eventually jobbed that task to another company in 1963 that had equipment allowing two people to produce 1,000 dozen popsicles in one hour, he added.

The ice cream museum reminds us of how much Americans love ice cream. Colonial grew just before the Great Depression by sailing on the wings of a popular 1927 song titled “You Scream, I Scream, We All Scream For Ice Cream” by Howard Johnson.

Colonial’s growth spurt during the 1950s through the 1970s eventually led to three Colonial sites operating in St. Charles for a short time in the mid 1990s, all continuing momentum the Anderson family previously enjoyed with its “Snappy Snack” burger and ice cream shop on West Main Street in St. Charles from 1957 to 1962.

The current eastside Colonial restaurant opened in 1959, adding to a downtown shop first established in the 1930s. In 1995, a west-side restaurant opened off Lincoln Highway in a former Wags/Shoney’s restaurant site near property that once housed the St. Charles Mall, and eventually moved to Randall Road, where it was later converted to the Syrup restaurant.

There’s a lot more to this ice cream business than meets the eye, of course. For example, one item on display is the old “Soda Jerk” lever. Those who became known as Soda Jerks got that name because the soda fountain called for pushing the lever for a fine stream of soda, and pulling it forward to create the drink’s foamy topping.

Colonial has come a long way since Anderson’s great-uncles — William, Carl and John Arthur — delivered milk in St. Charles by horse-drawn wagons in the early 1900s, and family patriarchs Paul and Joe K. Anderson devoted their lives to building a company that would stand the test of time.

The story extends from those early days to the creation in 1975 of the “Kitchen Sink” (six scoops of ice cream with three toppings, two bananas, nuts and whipped cream in a dish designed like a kitchen sink), a treat that remains popular to share to this day. After all, Anderson had given himself the title of “Director of Scooping Fun” during his tenure.

The story, however, doesn’t have a particularly happy ending for the “Awful, Awful” milkshake.

“Bond Ice Cream in New Jersey was also using that name, copyrighted it, and Colonial could no longer use it,” Anderson said.

As such, the “Awful, Awful,” touted as a milkshake “thin enough to be sipped,” lasted on the Colonial menu only from 1966 to 1971.

Spiffing up downtown spot

Earlier this week in downtown Geneva, workers were busy on the brick exterior of the vacant retail spot at 220 W. State St. that years ago housed the Good Cents Children clothing store.

Longtime residents may remember the location as Henry’s, a five-and-dime store popular with adults and kids for decades. Henry Bond Fargo had that site built in 1915, and it had been under family ownership since, with the most recent being Charles Sansone, the great-grandson of Fargo.

The tuckpointing project, partially funded by a city grant, hints that something new could be coming to that location.

The storefront window says the location has been sold, but the new owner’s name is not listed because a city permit for the property was not needed for the current maintenance project as compatible mortar was being used and the joint width of the bricks was not changing.

We’ll have to keep an eye on what’s coming next at that prominent storefront along West State Street.

The tally for trees

There might have been a few eyebrows raised when an update from Geneva regarding the East State Street reconstruction project noted 47 parkway trees would be removed next year.

I wasn’t pleased when the city removed trees along Randall Road in front of a retail strip, when the rest of Randall has nice trees along the parkway.

However, this time the tree removal coincides with the Illinois Department of Transportation’s plan to expand State Street (Route 38) from Glengarry Drive west to the Fox River.

The loss of those trees is being offset, the city says, with 290 new trees being planted as part of the reconstruction project over the next two years.

I wrote about some new construction along East State Street and the landscaping that would be part of The Roosevelt project.

More is likely coming along East State as the city’s multi-year project includes streetscape enhancements, bike lanes, traffic signal upgrades, as well as new street lighting, water main and storm drainage improvements.

Did you know?

As health care options changed over the years, so too did our hospital buildings — in name and location.

Plenty of residents remember when Delnor Hospital in St. Charles and Community Hospital in Geneva merged in 1985, and moved to Randall Road in 1991 as Delnor Community Hospital.

St. Charles residents hated to see Delnor move from its North Fifth Avenue location, which featured a row of windows in which family members outside could look into the maternity ward to see newborns. This was a new option in addition to traditional windows for parents and others to safely view babies from the hospital corridor.

And Genevans, likewise, had grown accustomed to their downtown hospital between Second and Third streets.

But before 1925, St. Charles residents went to Colonial Hospital, a site established in Geneva in 1908. Those with contagious diseases did go to a site in St. Charles known as Pest House, on South Fifth Street, where the former Shelby School building is located and now houses various businesses.

In 1925, St. Charles built its own hospital at Second and Park avenues in a mansion owned by Henrietta Miller. It was known as St. Charles City Hospital and years later would essentially be operated by American Legion members during the Depression.

In 1940, philanthropists Lester and Dellora Norris founded Delnor Hospital and opened it at the North Fifth Avenue location.

In Geneva, Community Hospital was in operation from 1925 to 1985, with the Colonial Hospital Board becoming the Community Hospital Board. Community Hospital was located near the rear of what is now the Dodson Place retail court.

Today, care provided through the merged hospitals takes place as Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital at an ever-expanding campus on Randall Road in Geneva.

You can still find the name Delnor Community Hospital in some online searches, but Delnor is now part of the Northwestern Medicine network.

• dheun@sbcglobal.net